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Authors: Anton Gill
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impression on the general. Both Oster and Beck were passionate riders, and the shared interest provided an excuse for several excursions into the Grünewald, where the horsemen could discuss Resistance matters undisturbed. Oster worked hard on Beck in his pragmatic way, and it is regrettable if not tragic that Beck became the spiritual head of the Military Opposition only after his retirement from Army service — something he himself acknowledged almost immediately, as he continued to believe for a long time that Hitler could be dissuaded rather than forced from his course of action. But as a retired officer, Beck had no executive power in official circles at all. The friendship with Oster continued and deepened, however, creating one of the strongest links in the chain of the senior Resistance.
Beck was given to lengthy consideration and reflection, a soldier who spent thirty-two of his forty years’ Army service in the General Staff, a man whose manner and appearance were far more those of an academic than an officer. Never a National Socialist, he had a certain sympathy for Hitler’s military and territorial aims, and his conversion to the anti-Nazi camp was a gradual process, built as much on practical as moral considerations.
He was born in 1880, the son of a Rhineland engineer who on account of bad eyesight had been the first to break the military tradition of the family. Beck grew up in a cultured household, a reserved and sensitive child whose favourite subjects were literature, history and mathematics. He always intended to join the Army, and was a captain in the General Staff by the time he was thirty-three.
He married in the spring of 1916, and his only child, a daughter, was born the following January. In November of that year, his wife died of tuberculosis. Beck was given the news on the West Front. His reaction throws an interesting light on his character. He was a talented musician, yet now he laid down his violin for ever. He never remarried, or had any relationship with another woman. Wherever he moved in the course of his subsequent military career, one room was designated as his wife’s, and decorated and furnished precisely as her room had been during their brief marriage.
His daughter, who was brought up by relatives but who joined him at the age of fourteen, remembers that the Army was his life. He was an ascetic man — his pleasures taking the form of an occasional glass of wine and the odd cigar, though he liked thoroughbred horses, the interest which formed the basis for his friendship with Oster.
Beck certainly did not react to the rise of Nazism with antipathy. Like Oster he regretted the fall of Imperial Germany, though he had served the Republic conscientiously. He was depressed by the imposition of the Oath of Loyalty to Hitler, but although his secretary at the time, Luise Benda (later married to the Nazi general, Alfred Jodl), remembers his referring to 2 August as ‘the blackest day of my life’, he did take the oath, and there is every indication that he still believed at that stage that Hitler would uphold the German military tradition and even be its saviour. Only later did he express to his brother Wilhelm his regret at not having obeyed his initial instinct to resign over the matter.
Hitler as defender of the Army was certainly the gist of his speech to the War Academy on its 125th anniversary in October 1935, and it is also significant that he wholeheartedly approved of General Ludendorff, giving a radio broadcast loud in his praise on his seventieth birthday in April 1935. Ludendorff was one of the most prominent generals of the First World War, and a vigorous and active supporter of Hitler’s abortive putsch in 1923. Beck had no second thoughts about Germany’s moral right to have waged the Great War. He shared this attitude with most officers of his age and conservative outlook.
Such views did not preclude opposition to Hitler, especially as the Führer’s ambitions
Beck was given to lengthy consideration and reflection, a soldier who spent thirty-two of his forty years’ Army service in the General Staff, a man whose manner and appearance were far more those of an academic than an officer. Never a National Socialist, he had a certain sympathy for Hitler’s military and territorial aims, and his conversion to the anti-Nazi camp was a gradual process, built as much on practical as moral considerations.
He was born in 1880, the son of a Rhineland engineer who on account of bad eyesight had been the first to break the military tradition of the family. Beck grew up in a cultured household, a reserved and sensitive child whose favourite subjects were literature, history and mathematics. He always intended to join the Army, and was a captain in the General Staff by the time he was thirty-three.
He married in the spring of 1916, and his only child, a daughter, was born the following January. In November of that year, his wife died of tuberculosis. Beck was given the news on the West Front. His reaction throws an interesting light on his character. He was a talented musician, yet now he laid down his violin for ever. He never remarried, or had any relationship with another woman. Wherever he moved in the course of his subsequent military career, one room was designated as his wife’s, and decorated and furnished precisely as her room had been during their brief marriage.
His daughter, who was brought up by relatives but who joined him at the age of fourteen, remembers that the Army was his life. He was an ascetic man — his pleasures taking the form of an occasional glass of wine and the odd cigar, though he liked thoroughbred horses, the interest which formed the basis for his friendship with Oster.
Beck certainly did not react to the rise of Nazism with antipathy. Like Oster he regretted the fall of Imperial Germany, though he had served the Republic conscientiously. He was depressed by the imposition of the Oath of Loyalty to Hitler, but although his secretary at the time, Luise Benda (later married to the Nazi general, Alfred Jodl), remembers his referring to 2 August as ‘the blackest day of my life’, he did take the oath, and there is every indication that he still believed at that stage that Hitler would uphold the German military tradition and even be its saviour. Only later did he express to his brother Wilhelm his regret at not having obeyed his initial instinct to resign over the matter.
Hitler as defender of the Army was certainly the gist of his speech to the War Academy on its 125th anniversary in October 1935, and it is also significant that he wholeheartedly approved of General Ludendorff, giving a radio broadcast loud in his praise on his seventieth birthday in April 1935. Ludendorff was one of the most prominent generals of the First World War, and a vigorous and active supporter of Hitler’s abortive putsch in 1923. Beck had no second thoughts about Germany’s moral right to have waged the Great War. He shared this attitude with most officers of his age and conservative outlook.
Such views did not preclude opposition to Hitler, especially as the Führer’s ambitions
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